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I've been doing it, and it's not that bad. I think the key is making large enough batches that you can freeze a bunch of cubes. We haven't been making any recipes yet, just single fruit or veg (steamed and pureed in the Beaba Babycook). We alternate between giving him two cubes of a single veg or fruit or mixing two together to make a different flavor.

For his vegetables, we just take the cubes from the freezer and put them in his bowl, and microwave for 60 seconds or so. For the fruit, I try to put a cube in the fridge the night before, but putting it in the microwave for 15-20 seconds also melts it without heating it up.

I'm going to try to do some meats this weekend - I'm a little nervous about how that will go, but it is nice having the freedom to use good organic chicken, add in whatever spices I want, etc.

I do like it! I got the kind with the two steamers, so I can make two batches at once. On another thread though, someone recommended a different baby food steamer that they liked better than the babycook (I think they tried both) - you may want to search for it and check out the reviews on both!

I also make large batches and freeze it. Although I never really made purees, I do make her regular food and freeze it in Avent Via milk containers. I either place it in the fridge the night before to thaw it or run warm water on it for a few seconds and it pops right out on a bowl so I can microwave it. She has food allergies, so it's basically my routine. But she didn't eat purees long enough for me to ever try it with purees.

@mrsmate: that is exactly what I did! I never bothered with the steaming and pureeing large amounts. Once I built up my confidence in feeding him actual food, we moved pretty quickly into baby led weaning (mainly out of laziness and exhaustion than anything else).

All I did was cook a little extra of whatever we were eating, then cooked the baby food a little longer and mashed it with a potato masher. I was happy to do fewer dishes since I was only cleaning our normal dinner prep dishes. Ice cube trays are great for storage and cheap too.

The bags of dried peas are great, boil for a half hour and you have pea mush that is perfect for the little one, and can control the salt content, etc.

I bought a few of the Gerber Nature Select tubs of purees for nights that I just didn't feel like cooking. Sure, in the beginning I was all excited about making his food, but after a while I was too tired to care and happy to have something pre-made on hand too.

I don't think it takes much time at all; but I love to cook, so that might help, too. Making purees wasn't that time consuming and you can freeze batches.

Now that LO eats "real food", every few days I make up dinner stuff for her. I saute up squash, zucchini, mushrooms, etc.; bake sweet potatoes and make up big batches of spaghetti sauce for her (that's 1/3 tomato, 1/3 pureed sweet potato and 1/3 pureed carrots) and cook up pasta shells and then freeze individual portions.

I usually make her food for the next several days while she's eating dinner. It's not hard to find the time if you want to find it; like anything else

@mrsmate: I agree that this helped a lot. Usually once or twice a month I would make a batch of something but everything else was just small amounts here and there.

I think it also depends on the food. Like we quickly learned that its easier to buy applesauce. Carrots and sweet potatoes were easy to make though (and cheaper)

i found that i liked to make some kinds of foods for him (hard boiled egg yolks, sweet potatoes, etc), and others i preferred to buy in jars because it seems like it would be not worth the trouble to make myself (pureed prunes, pureed green beans).

i think it should be fun, and not a chore!

I'm subscribing! I'm a new SAHM (after returning to work for a few months) and my daughter just started purées:)

I really want to make her foods and use organic so everything will be as natural as possible. I eat paleo and therefore don't touch processed foods, so it's hard for me to justify buying processed stuff in a jar for her. But I'll also have the time now that I SAH. While working, it prob would have been tough!

@tysonja: I picked and chose which ones I wanted to make too.

It's not terrible if you make enough for several weeks in one batch. Like others, I liked to plan around weekends and when DH could watch her for a while.

Nope it's not. I SAH but I have a hard time doing it when I have LO alone... But DH and I teamed up to do a lot of them. I also buy some bc I don't know how to do certain things and according to my pedi there are certain ones that you shouldn't make at home.

I found it to be the easiest thing in the world. Now, if you're going to be making elaborate meals to then puree and freeze them, that will take a lot of time. But if you're steaming or cooking fruits or veggies, or simple meats/beans/whatever, it's easy as can be. I only used pouches for when I needed shelf stable stuff to toss in the diaper bag and forget about.

Potato mashers and blenders are the way to go. So easy!!!! I froze some stuff but LO likes the recently made stuff better. It was actually fun. They will eat anything at that age.

Eta: a steamer basket too

How long can baby food stay frozen? I'm not sure how much maternity leave you are taking, but an option would be to make some before you go back to work, if you think that you will just be too busy when you are working full-time.

I did, and I just did it in batches. I'd peel, steam and puree a ton of fruits and veggies one weekend night, and then freeze a bunch in the Baby Bullet freezer cubes, transfer the frozen cubes to labeled freezer bags, and they would last 4 weeks at a time, sometimes longer. We also did a lot of baby led weaning, so we didn't do strictly purees for long, and BLW is super easy to make food for!

@hellobeeboston: I pop the food out and store in Ziplock bags with the date so I won't forget when we made it. I try to let it thaw out in the fridge but sometimes I forget and I will microwave. I warm up the breast milk separately in warm water and then add it at the end.

Looks like you can buy accessories for those mixers: http://www.cuisinart.com/parts/hand_blenders/csb-77.html

I like it because its really easy to clean and its small... doesn't take up a ton of space. We don't have a food processor so I don't have any experience with that!

@sunny: awesome - thanks for that link - the food processor is great, but a pain to clean, it makes a lot, but i don't want to make food for 2 months at one time. ha!